Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, to be released in 2017

Posthuman Studios is pleased to announce: Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, will be released this year, after a Kickstarter project and Open Playtest. The Kickstarter and Open Playtest will go live very soon, with the new edition planned for release in October.

We’ve been working on Eclipse Phase, Second Edition for a while now, conducting private playtests and refining our approach to the game, the book, and the product line. We’re really excited about folding in the lessons we’ve learned and addressing feedback from Eclipse Phase fans.

We have made five key changes to the game:

Faster Character Creation — package-buy character creation lets people build characters quickly without overlooking necessary items. Point-based character creation and tweaking is still available.

Streamlined Resleeving — an aptitude-linked pool system means that skills don’t need to be recalculated when a character resleeves.

Four Sample Teams — pre-fabbed teams can be dropped right into a game and serve as examples of balanced parties.

Redesigned Book — a spread-based organization keeps material close-at-hand with less page-flipping.

The Eclipse Phase universe is largely the same, with a few tweaks. We’ll go deeper into the changes during the Kickstarter campaign and Open Playtest!

Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, Releases
Following the print release of Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, we have a lineup planned of support products, starting with a Gamemaster’s Screen, and then followed by the Solar System Gazetteer.

Stay Up to Date
If you want to know exactly when the Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, Kickstarter and Open Playtest launches, subscribe to our mailing list!

Thanks for your support of Eclipse Phase and Posthuman Studios—we look forward to making more great games and telling new stories in the coming years! If you have any questions or comments, you can always reach us at info@posthumanstudios.com.

He Kickstarted Red Markets last year and still has to get the corebook, a few supplements, and a forum all up and running, plus being a full time educator and now running a podcast as well. The poor man must not sleep.

As a precautionist I am suspicious of change, but I'm looking forward to seeing this. A few early questions:
* Will there be some compatibility between first and second edition?
* Will you unify the detailed character creation, and character advancement? Having two different kinds of points to improve characters always feels weird to me.
* Will you be breaking up books into more topic-focused ones? I'm currently going through them all, extracting and collating information, and I find that a) the chapters on AGIs in Transhuman, and on Uplifts in Panopticon, feel kind of tacked-on, and could better have been unified in a book of their own, and b) while the tendency sprinkle traits, gear, and similar things throughout all books is par for the RPG book course, there really needs to be one consolidated book on that. The Morph Recognition Guide is a great example of doing a part of that exactly right, BTW.
* That Kickstarter, how much money will I have to throw in your direction to get all PDFs ASAP?

I don't want to nitpick this too much, but that date quoted there was the date the book was available in gaming stores; backers got their books earlier than that. We learned a ton from running the Transhuman Kickstarter, and will be applying those lessons to this one. (For starters, the Kickstarter itself is going to run for only 21 days, not a full month, and the Transhuman Kickstarter launched on April 23rd, so... we're pretty close, there!)

Very excited, can't wait to see how you want to streamline it all. I'd like to use the Fate version but my group doesn't seem very excited for it, so something that is less rules intensive is very welcome.

Posthuman Studios!
I am highly disappointed with you people.
When I was subscribing to your mailing list, I had been asked to confirm that I am not a robot.
(╯°Д°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Way to show your true colors,
I guess you're not so into morphological freedom after all. What a pity.

EDIT:
Looking forward to playtesting the rules with my group.

—

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Posthuman Studios!
I am highly disappointed with you people.
When I was subscribing to your mailing list, I had been asked to confirm that I am not a robot.
(╯°Д°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Way to show your true colors,
I guess you're not so into morphological freedom after all. What a pity.

Just a wild guess here, but if I understand this right then it will be like a dice-pool in for example White Wolf-games? Aptitude+Skill = final dice? Broader skills, I have noticed, make the players more creative and active. "No, I can find the direction in a forest because I am skilled in Orientation, NOT Navigation..."

I liked the "streamlining" that happened in the Fate-version. My flavour of game-engine is those who are less restrictive and more encouraging to "go wild". It seems like a paradox, but the simpler the game-engine is the less room there is for exploiting and optimization for the "find-the-bugs-and-exploit-them-players".
Another side of it is that players feel less reluctant to get into the game.

The idea to use the packages as the default system is also good in that aspect that the player feels that his character is connected to the gameworld and the setting. I like that.

Why make many books when you can make one hell of cool mega-book where you combine all the old material - updated and steamlined- with the new? Or a rule-book and a world-book?

Just ideas, I don't expect/demand any reply on it. Just some input. :)

I'm probably not the only one who has mixed feelings about this. Streamlining the rules sounds like a great idea since the current rules seem a bit lackluster when compared to the setting. What I don't like is the idea of having redundant information across editions. Very exciting news anyway.

Just a wild guess here, but if I understand this right then it will be like a dice-pool in for example White Wolf-games? Aptitude+Skill = final dice? Broader skills, I have noticed, make the players more creative and active. "No, I can find the direction in a forest because I am skilled in Orientation, NOT Navigation..."

I liked the "streamlining" that happened in the Fate-version. My flavour of game-engine is those who are less restrictive and more encouraging to "go wild". It seems like a paradox, but the simpler the game-engine is the less room there is for exploiting and optimization for the "find-the-bugs-and-exploit-them-players".
Another side of it is that players feel less reluctant to get into the game.

The idea to use the packages as the default system is also good in that aspect that the player feels that his character is connected to the gameworld and the setting. I like that.

Why make many books when you can make one hell of cool mega-book where you combine all the old material - updated and steamlined- with the new? Or a rule-book and a world-book?

Just ideas, I don't expect/demand any reply on it. Just some input. :)

I have some questions about the new edition: the timeline will be moved up ex. 12 af? There will be new uplift species (i loved the psycothic cats from transhuman playtest)? What will be the changes of the setting? New sapient aliens? And you will send an email to the backers of thranshuman when the second edition will go on kickstarter? I backed it and i would back the second edition from day one. Also seems that you dropped the tradition of naming the EP books whit only one word.

Now that you've mentioned it, I'd like to second the notion. Pretty much all the world description could be uncoupled from the rules aspects, except for when it comes to things like NPC stats.

We explored some options for doing a Core Setting Book and a Core Rules Book, but couldn't come to a conclusion that we liked well enough to pull the trigger on, given the other risks involved in splitting a core rulebook into two: print run size, having to keep both of them in stock, players thinking they're "not allowed" to see the setting information -- remember that the typical character in an Eclipse Phase game (not the typical person in the Eclipse Phase setting) likely has access to much of the material that's presented in an in-character manner.

Beyond the changes already outlined to the game system and rules presentation, we have some plans to make the line more accessible to players. I expect that it won't take long for everyone to learn about them, once the KS launches. :)

I don't understand the calls for pushing the "metaplot." Where on earth is there to GO in the setting? Everybody's teetering on the brink of singularity or destruction as-is. You could push it maybe once, but you're going to run into the absurd pretty quickly. The solar system can only be on the brink of changes for so long.

well there goes my money. On the faqw you left out the space combat book and a few of the references. I assume since those were later in the real world timeline those would be handed off to second edition as well?

I don't understand the calls for pushing the "metaplot." Where on earth is there to GO in the setting?

We know there will be some setting changes, I was wondering if they would be straight retcons or developments on the existing situation - also gives an opportunity to provide new conflicts that don't necessarily make sense with the setting as presented in AF10

I'm quite glad they arent jumping the time up. I think they have found a great knife edge to where its far out enough but we can still empathize and relate to whats happening. It wouldnt be too much further where in setting, it starts becoming post human and too alien.

With that said, I wouldnt mind seeing like 200 words, on AF15, and AF100 or some words the eventual independent wars of the extra solar colonies.

I'm pretty stoked about this new edition, but I do have a lot of thoughts on it.

1) Will morph creation in 2e be a corebook mechanic, or will we have to wait until later for that? I really think it should be corebook, because morph creation mechanics really changed the way the fanbase talked about the game.

2) How will these new morph pools refresh?

3) Will the new edition accommodate things that got too little support, like memetics and zero-G combat? (please give memetics some love)

And there was little support because there wasn't much on the topic beyond the little subheading on gravity in the core book. Hell, microgravity living in general received little information until Panopticon was released.

With the Kickstarter, I'm not asking to know what day it'll go up (unless you are willing to say ;), but roughly what period of the day + timezone were you aiming for? I always hate missing out on exclusive tiers because of stupid UTC+10